Open Moko NeoFR configuration and development

Quick Recap

OK, so I've had the NeoFR's for a few months now and have learned some really tough lessons. Most recently, concerning Android: It works great out of the box for the FR as a usable phone, however it is worthless to me since you can't access the USB port. This may be helpful down the line in my thesis when I touch on the subject of security, but for now establishing a connection with the Radio is of paramount importance.

Things I've learned: You need 2 main files for the FreeRunner: a root file system and kernel. These can either be installed on the SD card or into NAND memory (AKA: Flash). The rfs files can be downloaded directly or as a tarball and unzipped onto either the SD card or into NAND. If you put a rootfs and kernel on the SD card, you can boot into NOR (hold AUX, then press power) and boot into whatever distribution you have on the SD. THIS WILL NOT INSTALL THE DISTRO. Some distros come with an installation script, which can wipe out your SD card so it is important to backup the SD card before using an installation script. To backup the SD card use:

dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 | ssh user@backup.server "gzip -9 > sdcard.gz"

This will create a compressed backup of your card performing the compression on the backup server (assuming that it's more powerful than 400MHz). To restore, run the following from your backup server:

zcat sdcard.gz | ssh root@freerunner.address dd of=/dev/mmcblk0

This is from the DebianOnFreerunner wiki. I have decided to load Debian using their install script (install.sh). So now I am backing up the SD card which contains a vanilla OM2009 image that I copied over after removing Android.